This year we will be including a weekly Literacy and Numeracy section in the newsletter. This section will keep you informed of what training is occurring for teachers, tips and strategies for use at home and general literacy and numeracy experiences occurring across the school.

LITERACY

This year we are continuing to roll out the SoundsWrite program. The second half of last year we saw huge progress in our infant student's reading abilities. SoundsWrite is a phonics program that is a highly structured, multi-sensory, incremental and code-oriented, instructional approach to teaching children to read and spell. Last year Mr Webb, Miss Lewis and Miss Frogley were trained to deliver the program. Starting over the next few weeks, Mrs Krippner, Mrs Anderson, Ms Younger, Mrs Whalan and myself will also be trained. This is a 4 day training program.

This year we will be modifying our Kindergarten Home Reading Program to be aligned directly with the SoundsWrite program being taught in class.

NUMERACY

In 2019, we will be involved in various projects focusing on Numeracy. The first project will be a 'Cluster Improvement Model' approach with other schools, building teacher knowledge and leadership in Mathematics and Numeracy Education. It will be based on an Action Research Cycle. Miss Frogley and Mrs McCann will be involved in the K-2 Cluster (which we will be hosting each term) and Mrs Blakey and Mr Webb involved in the Years 5-8 cluster.

Along with this project occurring, our Years 4-6 teachers will be involved in MathsBURST Enrichment Program. This is an inquiry-based teacher professional learning and student enrichment program which will develop students' mathematics understanding through spatial reasoning and STEM practices.